Blue Flames
by n7kairos
Summary: Shepard ends up on Middle Earth after being caught up in the Crucible explosion. Follow her now as she slowly but surely becomes embroiled in a new war.
1. Middle Earth's N7

She woke up to the sight of a ugly mass wielding what looked like a medieval sword of some kind charging at her. Her tolerance of unknown ugly bastards, especially ones charging at her had never been high and the Reaper War had only reduced that tolerance. An unfortunate fact that brokered no good for the one charging, as this particular mass found out.

She brought up her hand, ignoring the pain screaming at her mind and fired off a biotic spear at the mass. The concentrated mass of dark energy impaled itself upon the mass, warping flesh and metal in an agonising hell of pain as it threw the mass nearly a dozen metre back.

The scream of agony uttered by the mass before the shockwave imploding into its flesh killed it gave way to the roar of dozens of his compatriots and Shepard realised she was in deep shit.

Every N7 operative, of which she had been one of the foremost members before her falling out with the Alliance Military, had been trained to discern their condition within seconds of returning to consciousness. Add in the special training she received from numerous sources during her years representing humanity as a Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (Spectre) operative, she was pretty much the adept at such actions.

Which didn't exactly reassure her at the moment. She was injured in several places, including at least a broken rib and her mind was in shambles from the repeated indoctrination attacks by Harbinger. The fact that she wasn't dead even after taking a near direct hit from Harbinger's MHD was a testament to her luck and her armour, which was half broken, the ablative coating gone.

Still, she wasn't exactly in a position to do any checks. Not before taking care of her current foes. Thankfully, her modified L7X biotic amps, courtesy of her salarian friend and genius Dr. Mordin Solus was functioning and these foes weren't biotic proof.

With a clenched fist, she brought up her biotic energy and released it in a vicious trio of spears towards the charge, as she sprung herself up from the ground.

With her other arm, she brought up her omni tool, pleased to see the Krogan manufactured tool intact and active and brought up her shield program. A bright convex shield of omni gel and nanite suspended in a mass effect energy field formed around her hand just as the spears found its mark.

Three more mass, she termed them uglies in her mind, fell to the eldritch attacks, only to be replaced by others.

A thwacking sound from beyond the mass of what her mind could only term as marauders without guns, picked up by her enhanced hearing (thanks Cerberus!) made her raise her shield up and the small streaks striking and bouncing off the shield made her glad of her action.

She would have fired off another volley of biotic spears if not for the pounding in her head which made it apparent that she would regret such a course of action almost immediately.

So she did the next best thing in her mind. She stepped forward and violently swung her shield at the next charging mass with all the force she could muster. The shield slammed into the not-marauder, sending him flying back into their compatriots behind, throwing them down as well.

Breathing space found, she dropped the shield and went to work. Four Cluster Overloads in rapid succession streaked out from her omni, striking into the vaulting frames of the not-marauders charging over the bodies of their fallen comrades.

The field of lighting held suspended in mass effect field brought into contact with conductive material went to town. Several lighting bolts sprang from body to body, inflicting thousands of volts of electric current into them, overloading organs and nerves into a frenzy of agony. Half her foes fell, some dead and others wounded.

She didn't stop. With another flick gesture of her omni, she sent four carnage at the ones behind, then brought her shield back up to deflect the arrows streaking at her.

The rest of the not-marauders were quickly put down by the carnage, the highly compressed bolts of plasma splashing through the rest of them, rendering them either dead(read:vaporised) or screaming masses of burning flesh.

A drone took care of the rest of them, the neural shock attacks of it quite lethal, and she slumped to the ground, too tired to pay attention to the craven that flew away from it's vantage point from the trees at the edge of the clearing.

**1**

Night had fallen and with it came the chill of the dusk. Shepard sat on the hardened ground within her shelter, taking stock for the last time before she went to bed. After she had recovered from the immediate fatigue of the battle, she had searched the area for whatever she could recover, making a pile of them. Then she had gone on to build a survival hut( N7 regulation compliant), her omni blade making short work of the nearby trees. She had also collected enough water and edible berries to get her through the night.

In front of her were all the things she had recovered as well as those things which were on her person. Among these were her custom made M99A Sabre Battle Rifle, albeit with a damaged heat sink, both her M77 Paladin heavy pistols, and her M12 Locust submachine gun, several omni gel canisters, backup omni tools, medi-gel canisters, and most fortunately, an emergency supplies canister containing enough sealed provisions to last days. Not that all this made her situation any easier.

She was low on thermal clips, only several of them being full and a half spent one in her Locust, she had injuries that required much better attention than a medi-gel canister and field dressing could take care and worse of all, her armour had suffered significant damage.

The heavy duty plating had shattered from the near hit by the MHD, the ablative plating completely gone. Several of the servos were damaged and her helmet was gone. Which meant she'd have to depend upon her omni tool for communications and navigation, instead of the dedicated holographic smart display with built in high function VI.

Currently she was in her undersuit, her armour standing locked in front of her. Beside her on the ground was her M12 Locust, one of two of her only functioning firearm. She had been forced to cannibalize parts from her M77s to replace the damaged components on her Sabre, the precision rifle's range and accuracy triumphing the stopping power of both her pistols. If she was indeed stuck in some primitive world, as all evidence, including a field autopsy of one of the not-marauders she'd killed suggested, she liked the idea of having the range advantage. She was experienced with charge and melee tactics, being a favourite of the basic Reaper husk, and she had found being out of range with a powerful rifle was the best way to counter such attacks.

She started patching up her armour, generous amounts of omni gel, and components fixing the gaps and gashes in her chestplate, then on the back armour, the shoulders, arms and legs. She had already repaired the damaged servos with components from her armour's emergency storage, which was still intact.

A round of howls, hundreds of them, and the sound of drums stopped her work. She immediately donned her armour, the CBT shields activating as soon as the Silaris armour was locked on and the pressure and environmental seals activated.

She stored the rest of her supplies, attaching the emergency canister to the back of her armour, the mag clamps locking it in place. Then placing the Locust in the weapons clamp, she picked up her Sabre and headed out, kicking the shelter down with her enhanced strength.

**2**

A fast paced silent jog found her staring at an odd sight five minutes after. What looked like a group of dwarf men and a child( which he couldn't be considering the lines she saw through the optic of her Sabre), and an old man with a staff were on the trees, surrounded by giant wolves and what looked like bigger versions of the not-marauders. They were preparing to light the trees on fire.

She couldn't let that happen, the ones on the trees might be her only source of answer as to which godforsaken planet, if this was indeed a planet, in the universe she was stuck in.

She switched to warp ammo and sighted in the biggest of the not marauders, the one sitting on a giant ass wolf and barking something in a language her translators couldn't identify.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out, she fired.

Gandalf was most perplexed by the appearance of Azog the defiler, contrary to his earlier statement to Thorin Oakenshield. The Valar had given no sign that such a foe was rallied against the expedition.

He was about to prepare some magic, when lo! A loud bang rang out and Azog fell! His head shattered by something, something which to him, Mithrandir, felt like magic but not magic. Perplexing indeed.

Two more bangs and two more goblins fell, Azog's lieutenants.

Then Thorin Oakenshield charged down, his elvish blade cleaving through Azog's mount and the goblin next to it in one mighty stroke. Spurred by his action, the rest of the company attacked too. Axes chopped, swords cleaved and arrows and stones found eyes and jaws to break. Not to be outdone, Gandalf jumped down, slamming his staff down to the ground. Brilliant light, white as the moon and imbued with the secret fire, burst out, impaling the goblins with its rays. The nearest ones to the light shrieked cries of agony as the pure light set their foul flesh on fire, while the ones further back shrieked away. Then wielding staff and sword, he waded into the melee, knocking and stabbing his foes.

Quickly they would have made short work of their foes but the remaining goblin, Azog's third and least favourite, rallied them with his battle cry, driving the wolves into the dwarves and goblins around them. He didn't forget the mysterious attacker too. A band of the biggest and toughest of his subordinates broke off, their wolves galloping them towards the direction from which the attacks came.

Shepard looked through the scope, sighting in on the runners or flankers, as her old Sergeant would say. She squeezed the trigger as soon as the crosshair lined up and shifted target, barely wincing as the suit pumped in several syringes worth of stimulants. Those special cocktails, courtesy of N7 had special enhancers and nutrients that overcharged the body, essentially giving the operative 120% of effectiveness. It also came with a massive headache afterwards. Several massive headaches for her.

Three more shots and she was out. By then, they were too close to use a precision rifle anyway. She replaced the Sabre in its clamp and took out the Locust. She favoured this SMG for its almost assault rifle scale range and stopping power. Plus the 4 sights pretty much ensured headshots.

Bracing it against a tree branch, she let loose in rapid three round bursts. The inferno rounds, nano-thermitic projectiles encased in high density mass effect field(making it effective in zero gravity as well) burned through as soon as it impacted, turning the charge into a rout.

She switched mods, putting in a standard incendiary ammo mod, and moved forward, bringing up her biotics to form a barrier around her as she simply walk fired towards the fleeing uglies.

Gandalf frowned as the vague shape appeared over the horizon, attacking the fleeing goblins with abandon. Quickly it attacked and quickly they all fell, one by one. Then it approached them and his eyebrows rose so high that they looked as if they would fall down.

She was, he could see, not of this land. In fact, he couldn't hope to find her and her strange garb. Her attire had a strange sheen to it and he could hear the gulp of the younger dwarves with their blood in heat, staring at her figure. Her garb attuned her figure and beauty, and had he not been Gandalf, even he would have stared .

He of course, being the Mai he was, did no such thing. Instead, he stared at her with his piercing eyes, getting her measure. He could see she was a formidable warrior, even with the injuries she was hiding, and her magic made her even more so. He could also see the damaged sections of her armor and the way she held herself. She was locked in the warrior's way, her heart set in fighting or fleeing if they turned wrong. Fighting, from the looks of her eyes, and her grip on what he assumed was a crossbow of some unknown type. It certainly wasn't a sword.

While Gandalf the wizard was sizing her up, so was she. Now closer, she could see the sword and other weapons (no pistols or firearms, to her disappointment) the blood from the fallen uglies sprayed over their clothes. She'd already concluded none of the short men, even the shortest were children. That only left one answer. They were dwarves, the shortest possibly being a subspecies.

She'd also seen him light the uglies up with his staff. She couldn't keep her disappointment down when all her scans found no trace of technology and a sigh emerged from her lips, settling into the space between them like a heavy weight.

**3**

Gandalf wasn't the first to break the silence. It was a wooly feeted hobbit who went up to the strange lady.

Shepard looked at the person approaching her, roughly the size of a volus. He was wearing old fashioned breeches,and waistcoat, something straight out of a museum. Hanging from a belt was a short sword in a scabbard and she could see the tip of a handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket.

As for the small man himself, he was short, her optics told her the exact size- 3.45''. She noticed he wore no shoes, his feet instead being covered by thick hair. His face was warm, his eyes a warm brown, a kind face broken by the frowns lining his face and the blood on his clothes.

Bilbo bowed and thanked her in Sindarin and she noticed his pointed broad ears, almost like a fairy tale elves, but not quite. She frowned at the language, it sounded beautiful but her translator came up short again.

Seeing her look of surprise, Gandalf stepped forward.

"Bilbo, she does not understand. Let me try"

He then addressed the lady in all the languages of the fair people, including the Common Tongue, all to no avail. It seemed she truly was a foreigner.

The roar of the goblins made him turn towards the new foes. It seemed the foul creatures were set upon the thought of avenging their king. The taste of juicy dwarven flesh must be driving them equally, he thought to himself.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the foreign lady turn her weapon towards the sound, her stance widening only a bit, and from a few feet away, he could feel her body tense, ready to pounce upon on any threat and after her display in the previous moments, he had no illusions about her ability to do just that.

A mass of goblins, hundreds, maybe thousands charged alongside an equal number of wargs and he, Gandalf that he was, felt the inkling of despair.

Shepard gritted her teeth at the sight. It seemed the uglies nest had been kicked by the group she had approached and now the uglies were screaming murder, coming for them and by association, for her.

She linked the scope to her synaptic processors and aimed for the ones in the front, only to be interrupted by eagle cries.

Looking up, she found the sky filled with eagles and eagles of a size that should not exist. They were practically ginormous. Her optics gave her a wingspan of nearly 12 meters and that was for the smaller ones.

Following them with her eyes, she saw them swoop down and tear into the goblins, their speed and eagle sharp claws tearing into dozens of goblins at once.

Then she found herself floating and realised she had been picked up by an eagle, it's claws holding her tight.

Up and up they went, in spiralling circles and she saw eagles going after the stragglers down below. Then they were close to the clouds and she looked up and around. She was not happy.

There were towering mountains and rivers and even a few settlements but no signs of industry and with it, no sign of her way out of this planet. No way for her back to her home or what's left of it.

**4**

Shepard glared at the large feather bug, apparently someone important to the eagles and friend to the staff wielding oldie as it looked down upon her with an intense stare. Usually, when a person finds themselves under the gaze of the mighty eagle king, they are intimidated. The king eagle was older than the oldest man alive and wise beyond years. He was Power embodied, and not just in his physicality. Nay, those wiser could sense the power within. She however had stared down beings far older and powerful, if not however.

After a moment the bird looked away, and spoke in his eagle voice to the oldie and she could somehow feel the amusement role off his voice. The old man replied something and they went back and forth for a minute or two.

Next thing she knew, she was taken by yet another eagle alongside the rest of the company and she were deposited on a crag alongside rabbits and small hogs hunted by the eagles.

She sat down on one side of the crag, away from the others and unclamped the canister from her back. Setting it down, she unlocked it and looked inside.

The canister had Emergency rations and MREs, fortunately for levo species. She took a pack of salted pork MRE, and shut the canister, putting it away on one side. Then she broke the seal of the cook tube. The meal was heated up to normal temperature within seconds. She opened the top seal. The whiff of pork and rice made her stomach grumble and her mouth water and she realised she was ravenous.

Not bothering for a fork, she dug in with gusto, eating it with her hand.

She didn't look up until she felt the figure standing before her. Looking up, she found the old man standing in front of her(her mind refused to acknowledge the word wizard). He gestured to a place beside her and she shrugged.

Gandalf sat down beside the lady he couldn't speak to. He was not the Mair to deal with the mind. That was the realm of the blue Wizards and Saruman, the head of the Istari. Instead he merely offered her a spare pipe filled with weed, something to ease the pain his sharp eyes could see she felt.

She took the pipe, lit it with the offered brand and took a long drag, letting it out slowly. During the war, she'd found weed, produced in the orbital cities of Earth, and brought to the Citadel by fleeing refugees had helped her maintain her calm and deal with the constant headaches from stim withdrawals after particularly intense missions without going to Dr Chakwas. So without any shame, she'd used her Spectre status to legalise the sale of weed(which was previously a banned item in the Citadel itself) and earned herself free bonus packages of the best quality weed from the sellers.

Which was really fortunate. Considering she was in a world without advanced medicine or industry, meaning no replenishment once her current stock of medicine is depleted, she would have to rely more on weed and herbs, alternative medicine for the more mundane injuries and keep the good stuff for emergencies.

Before she realised, she was asleep, her suit having pumped in a mild sedative to nudge her tired body.

**5**

The pain woke her up. The medi gel and looking at the chronometer, the eight hours of sleep had done her good but broken ribs were a different matter.

So she settled for the alternative. Using her omni tool's scanner, she found the breaks. Then she released the armor, stepping away from it and set to work setting them with her biotics.

'_This is going to hurt',_ she thought to herself and it did. The first one nearly tore out a cry as the biotic equivalent of a mild nudge put the rib in its original position in totality. The second and third followed immediately and Shepard fell to the ground, sweat pouring down her body as the pain reached an unbearable point.

Getting up she found them staring at her and shook her head..she was in no mood to listen to more gibberish. Quickly she got into her armour, and hissed a sigh of relief as the suit pumped meds into her, including a pain killer.

Not too soon too, as the eagles arrived to take them to the next leg of the journey, Shepard now officially part of their company. Unawares to her, Gandalf and Thorin had a falling out over her, with the kin of Durin reluctant to take her upon, even while acknowledging her prowess. In the end, Gandalf had made himself responsible for her, for her duration of the travel.

What Shepard was aware was that her translation softwares were working overtime, compiling words and using visual cues from her optical sensors to determine their meaning and thus translate the language. Hopefully, soon she'd be able to ask some questions.

**6**

The Eagles dropped them on top of a crag which looked over the surrounding area. There were a few stepping stones cut into the rock on which they seemed to be standing.

More conversation followed among the rest of the company, which merely sounded like gibberish, her translation software still unable to formulate a complete translation. So she didn't listen. Instead, gritting her teeth in frustration, she took note of the surrounding area, her sensors at their full.

The surrounding forest were teeming with life and of unusual sizes too. There were everything from giant trees to big bees of truly great size to predators of every kind, though aside from the bees, the rest were noticeably at a distance.

The nearest source of life was the river, which was teeming with fishes and fresh water. Without ado, she stepped into the water, away from where the rest of the company were watering and bathing.

The water cooled the outside of the power armor while at the same time, the suit's emergency water supply was replenished, the small scale water pack built into the suit having its own purifiers and nutrient mix.

After the suit was done, she went back to the shore and waited for the others.

Soon enough at a signal for the wizard, a title for the old man that her brain seemed to be adamant about using, they proceeded, first across the river, the smallest of them, the one who had come up to her, being piggybacked by another, then through long green grass and down the lines of the wide- armed oaks and tall elms.

From the gestures made by the rest of the company, Shepard could hazard that their destination might not be safe as well. Good thing she'd popped in a new thermal clip in her Locust.

They continued walking, up slope and down dales and through more forest. Sometimes they would rest and the rest of the company would eat. Her suit kept pumping nutrients at regular intervals, so it would be a while before she needed to eat, though not a long while.

It was the middle of the afternoon before they noticed that great patches of flowers had begun to spring up, all the same kinds growing together as if they had been planted. Especiallythere was clover, waving patches of cockscombclover, and purple clover, and wide stretches of short white sweet honey-smelling clover. There Was a buzzing and a whirring and a droning in the air. Bees were busy everywhere.

The Bees were giant, as her sensors had told them.

They were bigger than hornets. The drones were bigger than your thumb, a good deal, and the bands of yellow on their deep black bodies shone like fiery gold.

After a while they came to a belt of tall and very ancient oaks, and beyond these to a high thorn-hedge through which you could neither see nor scramble.

Next followed a peculiar episode indeed.

Gandalf took the lady and the hobbit along with him, after asking the rest to wait. Perhaps the presence of a lady would soften Beorn a little more.

They went off along the hedge, and seeing he was frightened, Shepard placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder until he was calm, walking with her knees slightly bent.

They soon came to a wooden gate, high and broad, beyond which they could see gardens and a cluster of low wooden buildings,some thatched and made of unshaped logs:barns, stables, sheds, and a long low wooden house. Inside on the southward side of the greathedge were rows and rows of hives with bell-shaped tops made of straw. The noise of the giant bees flying to and fro and crawling in and out filled all the air.

They pushed open the heavy creaking gate and went down a wide track towards the house. Some horses, very sleek and well-groomed, trotted up across the grass and looked at them intently with very intelligent faces; then off they galloped to the buildings.

"They have gone to tell him of the arrival of strangers," said Gandalf to Bilbo.

Soon they reached a courtyard, three walls of which were formed by the wooden house and its two long wings. In the middle there was lyinga great oak-trunk with many lopped branches

beside it. Standing near was a huge man with a thick black beard and hair, and great bare arms and legs with knotted muscles. He was clothed in a tunic of wool down to his knees, and was leaning on a large axe. The horses were standing by him with their noses at his shoulder.

"Ugh! here they are!" he said to the horses."They don't look dangerous. You can be off!" Helaughed a great rolling laugh, put down his axe and came forward.

"Who are you and what do you want?" he asked gruffly, standing in front of them and towering tall above Gandalf. As for Bilbo he could easily have trotted through his legs without ducking his head to miss the fringe of the man's brown tunic.

"I am Gandalf," said the wizard.

"Never heard of him," growled the man."And what's this little fellow?" he said, stooping down to frown at the hobbit with his bushy blackeyebrows.

"That is Mr. Baggins, a hobbit of good family and unimpeachable reputation," saidGandalf. Bilbo bowed. He had no hat to takeoff, and was painfully conscious of his many missing buttons.

Then the man stopped before her.

"And the Lady?" He asked Gandalf, never once wavering his haze from her.

"Alas, of her i can provide no account, except that of our rescuer and friend in need"

At that Beorn looked at Gandalf, then back at her..

Shepard was getting anxious. The big man and the wizard kept talking, and now the man was staring at her.

She stared right back, holding his gaze, which grew unnerving the longer she stared into it. Soon every senses in her body were centered on holding it and she felt as if she would have to break off.

Only for him, at last, to break off with a laugh.

"She is a true warrior. You did well to bring her." Gandalf, caught off guard, merely nodded in agreement.

"Well, now I know who you are, or who you say you are. What do you want?"

"To tell you the truth, we have lost our luggage and nearly lost our way, and are rather in need of help, or at least of advice. I may say we have had rather a bad time with goblins in the mountains."

"Goblins?" said the big man less gruffly. "Oho, so you've been having trouble with them have you? What did you go near them for?"

"We did not mean to. They surprised us at night in a pass which we had to cross; we were coming out of the Lands over West into these countries—it is a long tale."

"Then you had better come inside and tell me some of it, if it won't take all day," said the man leading the way through a dark door that opens out of the courtyard into the house.

Following him they found themselves in a wide hall with a fire-place in the middle. Though It was summer there was a wood-fire burning in the smoke was rising to the blackenedrafters in search of the way out through an opening in the roof. They passed through this dim hall, lit only by the fire and the hole above it,and came through another smaller door into a sort of veranda propped on wooden posts made of single tree-trunks. It faced south and was still warm and filled with the light of the westering sun which slanted into it, and fell golden on the garden full of flowers that came right up to the steps.

There they sat and Gandalf started telling the story, interrupted bit by bit by the arrival of the rest of the company. By the end of it, Shepard was laughing at the antics of Gandalf and the rest, all the while their conversation got even more data for her translators.

By the time the wizard had finished his tale and had told of the eagles' rescue and of how they had all been brought to the Carrock, thesun had fallen behind the peaks of the MistyMountains and the shadows were long inBeorn's garden.

"A very good tale!" said he. "The best I have heard for a long while. If all beggars could tell such a good one, they might find me kinder.You may be making it all up, of course, but you deserve a supper for the story all the same.Let's have something to eat!"

"Yes please!" they all said together. "Thank You very much!"

Inside the hall it was now quite dark. Beorn Clapped his hands, and in trotted four beautiful

white ponies and several large long-bodied grey dogs. Beorn said something to them in a queer language like animal noises turned into talk. They went out again and soon came back carrying torches in their mouths, which they lit at the fire and stuck in low brackets on the pillars of the hall about the central hearth.

The dogs could stand on their hind-legs when they wished, and carry things with their fore-feet.Quickly they got out boards and trestles from the side walls and set them up near the fire.

Then baa—baa—baa! was heard, and in came some snow-white sheep led by a largecoal-black ram. One bore a white cloth embroidered at the edges with figures of animals; others bore on their broad backs trays with bowls and platters and knives and wooden spoons, which the dogs took and quickly laid on the trestle-tables. These were very low, low enough even for Bilbo to sit at comfortably.Beside them a pony pushed two low-seated benches with wide rush-bottoms and little short thick legs for Gandalf and Thorin, while at the far end he put Beorn's big black chair of the same sort (in which he sat with his great legs stuck far out under the table). These were all the chairs he had in his hall, and he probably had them low like the tables for the convenience of the wonderful animals that waited on him. What did the rest sit on? They were not forgotten.

The other ponies came in rolling round drum-shaped sections of logs, smoothed and polished, and low enough even for Bilbo; so soon they were all seated at Beorn's table, and the hall had not seen such a gathering for manya year.

There they had a supper, or a dinner, such as they had not had since they left the Last Homely House in the West and said good-bye to Elrond. The light of the torches and the fire flickered about them, and on the table were two tall red beeswax candles. All the time they ate,Beorn in his deep rolling voice told tales of the wild lands on this side of the mountains, and especially of the dark and dangerous wood,that lay outstretched far to North and South day's ride before them, barring their way to theEast, the terrible forest of Mirkwood.

The dwarves listened and shook their beards, for they knew that they must soon venture into that forest and that after the mountains it was the worst of the perils they had to pass before they came to the dragon's stronghold. When dinner was over they began to tell tales of their own, but Beorn seemed to be growing drowsy and paid little heed to them.They spoke most of gold and silver and jewels and the making of things by smith-craft, and Beorn did not appear to care for such things:there were no things of gold or silver in his hall,and few save the knives were made of metal at all.

They sat long at the table with their wooden drinking-bowls filled with mead. The dark night came on outside. The fires in the middle of the hall were built with fresh logs and the torches were put out, and still they sat in the light of the dancing flames with the pillars of the house standing tall behind them, and dark at the toplike trees of the forest.

Soon after they found themselves in their beds, and Shepard fell asleep, the warm bed and the full belly making her drowsy and comfortable. Her armor beside her bed and locked in, safe from both the curious and the malicious.

**7**

She was woken up by a soft touch. Her eyes snapping open immediately, she found herself staring at the wizard's face.

He placed a finger on his lips, the universal signal for silence and motioned for her to come with him with his hand.

She got up, careful not to make any sound and quickly got into her armor, the wizard standing a little away with wonder in his eyes.

Her equipment stashed and checked, she followed him out the door and back out through the path and soon they were off, this time on a different direction from where they came in, she noticed.

The path they took was through the woods. All around them, there were signs of life. She could hear the birds up high in the tall elms and oaks and somewhere near, there was water flowing. A butterfly landed on her shoulder one moment and the next, it was flying away, wherever it's whim led it.

She saw the first tracks, her enhanced eyesight easily picking out the impressions on the ground.

With a hand, she stopped the wizard, pointing towards the tracks. He merely gave a nod and motioned towards them, continuing forward in the direction of the tracks in his previous pace.

So now they were following bear tracks. Shepard shook her head and followed, arming a carnage on her omni tool just in case.

Soon, tracks piled upon tracks on even more tracks, until it looked as it every single shade and kind of bear ever present in the wide world were gathering here. The tracks came from everywhere and every direction except west, towards which only one giant set of tracks led, no return treads.

They veered off and started following these tracks. It led them back across trails to the river they had crossed, only at a place where the ford was deep and treacherous, and across there was a tall cliff, standing obstacle. There was no way they were crossing that, she knew. And they didn't.

The wizard veered off, Shepard following, towards farther west, taking up even more wild trails, filled with what felt like to Shepard, was the underbrush of the last century of the woods. Six months was a less fanciful estimate.

They walked some more miles, always by the riverside or close to it, until finally they found their crossing. A place where the river was wide and quite shallow, enough to allow them to cross.

They waded across and tracked back, the path less wild on the other side, to the cliffside and the tracks they were chasing. By that time, the sun was low and the wizard didn't follow on.

The tracks went in the direction of the woods in which Shepard had saved the strange company's life. A fact that didn't reassure her. The wizard merely looked at it quizzically and then gave a brief nod, before turning back, beckoning her with a raised hand.

It was as she was about to follow him that it happened.

Her omni tool lit up with a reading detecting a massive spike in dark energy, the compass pointing towards the distant mountains and she collapsed, head striking the ground as pain like a thousand knives stabbing all together seared into her skull and her vision started blacking out.

Images flashed through her mind.. _Thane..Miranda.. Garrus..Torfan.. Citadel.. dying.. waking up.. collectors..harbinger.. catalyst.. dying again.._

The feeling of cold wet being splashed on her face brought her back to the present, to a strange land with a strange man looking at her with concern and she felt something break in her, a hope she never realised that she was even carrying until now and tears fell unbidden, wiping away the cold in warm messy pattern and she didn't have the strength to resist when the strange man simply held her against his chest, murmuring a soft almost aching tune in a language old and forgotten, even to this strange land as she sobbed against his against like a lost child in the wilderness.

**8**

The return was sombre. After her outburst, all she felt was spent and tired beyond measure. She silently smoked the weed pipe the wizard had handed over when she'd collected herself and followed him back through the miles and into the farm.

When they arrived, they were immediately set upon by the rest of the companions. The wizard guided her to the dinner table(it was evening outside). Her stomach growled at the smell of fresh food and she immediately took a platter and piled everything in site and set to work demolishing it, paying no attention to her surroundings except to reach for more food.

After she was done eating, she went straight to bed, leaving a micro forged listening device connected to her omni tool to record the conversation that the wizard and the rest were carrying out. More data for the translators.

The morning after she woke up to the sound of music and loud raucous sounds of celebration coming from the dining hall they had assembled in the last night.

With the brief and efficient movements of a seasoned soldier used to maintaining a certain personal hygiene in almost any condition, she completed her morning ablutions and dressed.

A glance at the watch on her omni tool showed it was actually well past morning, heading towards evening. It also showed all the data from the listening device has been integrated into the translation software database. More Hurray! for miniaturised Quantum-Entanglement Communication tech.

She emerged into the hall to find the rest of the companions eating and making merry with their host in the lead.

Without pausing their celebration, he merely nodded towards an empty seat near him and she didn't decline, hungry as she was starting to become. Seating herself, she quickly piled in food on a plate and set herself to the task of finishing it, leaving the listening device and the translation software to do its job.

After dinner, she went back to her bed, switching on and listening to the recordings from the listening device, trying to decipher something out of it and before she realised, she was asleep.

**A Dream**.

She found herself in a marvelous dazzling hall.. everything around was a kaleidoscope from the light of three jewels, at the centre of the room.

Around it stood 8 figures, of which all she could perceive was different haloed figures, but something told her there was much more to them.

The next moment she was amidst them, staring at the confluence of light.

Figures rushed by, little men, creatures in the shadow and then staring at her, reaching out, grasping at her, herself. Dark, twisted with indoctrinated eyes and hollow bones, and something beyond. Something old.

**We Are The Harbingers of Your Ascendence!**

She woke up.

**9**

She went outside, forgoing her armour for once. Outside the dawn was just breaking through the night and a soft light began to illuminate the splendor of the surroundings. She shivered and not from the cold. She had her hands clenched to stop the shaking and she sucked in deep breaths and slowly let them out. She didn't know how long she did that before the shakes stopped.

She then slowly filled the pipe with the weed filched from the old man and lit it with her omni tool, taking deep drags and letting them out. Soon enough she had smoke curling all around her in the morning dew and she even managed to spin them and create a ring or two.

A light cough made her turn around and she found the old man, his eyes twinkling with humour. Having caught her attention, he gestured towards the hall, the message clear enough.

She nodded, taking a last deep drag and then overturned the pipe, letting all the burnt stuff fall to the ground.

Going inside, she found everyone eating, their packs and everything beside them. It seemed they were leaving. She went inside, got her pack ready and carried to breakfast, sitting herself beside the old man. He had been one of the people in the light in the dream and she wanted to know why. She also had an inkling that sticking to him would get her answers the quickest.

The days following their departure, she spent collecting scans of her surroundings with the omni tool, and intensive recovery training, syncing her body and mind for any challenge that might come her way. She also spent an inordinate time just looking at things, usually with a pipe in her mouth, a habit that was getting more entrenched day by day and she wasn't bothered with it. Her enhancements made sure that none of the ill effects of smoking even had a chance to take hold, and it helped with the still lingering pain and the occasional shakes.

At last they reached the forest and after a lengthy farewell, of which she wasn't a part, she and the wizard turned their ponies to a new direction, wherever they may lead.

**10.**

She led the horse through the trail, following the wizard. They were on the last leg of their journey to wherever they were getting. Over the past few days, they'd travelled through dangerous territories, slinking around to hide from distant bands of crebain and orcs. It seemed trouble was brewing or had been brewing for a while and was about to explode.

Which was why she had been collecting herbs which scans showed had medicinal properties, and cleaning and recleaning her armor and weapons. In case of serious trouble, her supply of medigel wouldn't last. Nor would there be any time to lavish care upon her gear and herself.

The emergency canister, which she'd refashioned into a makeshift backup in similar fashion to assault packs issued to N7 trainees on survival training, was thus filled with sealed containers of herbs, including two additional containers of weed. She'd also taken a stock of edible berries and other wild food such as she could find.

Shaken from her thoughts by the sound of a running river, she looked up to find they'd arrived at their destination, and what a beautiful sight it was.

At the end of the forest path stood the entrance, below which she could see the wide valley, and dwarfing it all, the home.

It was easily the size of a city, with a simply enormous central building whose sloped roofs and towers reminded her somewhat of Gothic churches. Of course it wasn't Gothic, there was an element of something else there, something which she couldn't quite put a name on. It was as if the valley had a mind entirely of it's own.

They descended carefully, accompanied by the elves, she couldn't think anything else to call pointy eared humanoids who walked as if they were made of air, hiding just beyond her vision, and the cool breeze which seemed to envelope her, easing her stress. The elves appeared to be singing and she listened to their ethereal song till they arrived in front of their greeting party.

Leading the party was an elf of regal manner. His face was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful. His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars. Venerable he seemed as a king crowned with many winters, and yet hale as a tried warrior in the fulness of his strength.

He stepped forward to first greet the wizard and then at a look from him, the elf turned to her and bowed. Taking it as a sign of greeting, she bowed back and then followed as they went inside.

**11**

The next day, after a long evening of feast followed by a good night's sleep, someone knocked at her door.

Sealing off her armor, she opened the door to find the wizard standing before her, looking quite different. His long hair and beard was brushed and sparkling white, falling over pristine grey robes which flowed around him, falling just short of his sandals.

At his gesture, she followed him through to the house, going upwards till they reached a high arched room, overlooking the rest of the valley.

Stepping inside, she found herself the target of several different gazes. There was the host in golden robes, the greasy looking man in white robes who's gaze reminded her of dear old departed and not much mourned Jack, a beautiful silver haired beauty who made the part of her that dallied with the fair sex salivate, there was the man in brown robes who reminded her of Garrus, the men in blue robes, sitting aloof from the rest. Amidst all these people seated around a simple but beautiful table were two empty seats. She made her way and took a seat, the wizard taking the other.

Then setting her tool to record, she simply looked at them while they discussed whatever it was they were discussing, though judging from the arguments, at least part of it had to do with her. She was in a way used to that.

It was the part that wasn't likely about her that worried her. The tones were grimer, almost as if they were discussing the end of the world.

_Judging by my luck, that's exactly what they are discussing._


	2. Author's Note

**Welcome to my latest fanfiction effort. I am pleased with what i have written till now. unlike previous efforts, this has been less stressful to write.****I'm also pleased with the response I've gotten so far.****Now I've decided that I'll reply to reviews that i feel genuinely requires a reply.****So here's the first.**

**#Hill of the Hank - It is true that the Systems Alliance has it's own laws regarding drugs.****However, Shepard did not legalise it in System Alliance space. She did it in Citadel Council space. Which she as a Spectre has the authority to do so. Spectres are given a wide latitude..****Also keep in mind that Shepard is no ordinary Spectre. She is the leader of the war effort against the Reapers at the time. Her influence is far above and beyond what an ordinary Spectre operative can get in their entire lifetime.****She is also a paragrade Shepard. she has no qualms in using her influence in getting her way. You'll see something of that soon enough. **


	3. Battles Lost

**1**

_I was right_ was the gloomy thought in Shepard's mind as she and her companions approached the dark and forbidding ruin. While her translator still had not cracked the languages being spoken around her, she didn't need to hear what the others were saying to confirm her suspicion. The tense and grim mood from the meeting had persisted and deepened as the men in Gold, Grey, White and Brown or as her mind insisted on calling them - Goldie, Greyie,Whitey, Brownie- and the woman beside her, whom her mind had labeled Witch Lady, came closer and closer to their destination and now that they had arrived, she was sure one could sustain a nuclear fusion reaction from all the nervous energy floating coming from her companions. Combine this with the sick feeling similar to Reaper Indoctrination that came from the ruins and it set her on edge. It would be an understatement to say she was angry and paranoid.

Which was why she had her Locust out and ready with a fresh thermal clip and a very special ammo mod. A Phased Ammunition Mod takes advantage of the mass effect field properties of the gun to adapt it's barrel to fire highly condensed bolts of energy instead of projectiles. These bolts were capable of punching through shields and ablative armor, albeit with a price. The higher damage came with a higher thermal output,which meant that the thermal clip wouldn't last as long as it would if a weapon fired projectiles. Shepard however found it an acceptable trade off, considering the significantly higher damage the bolts offered and the increased effectiveness against Reaper targets, especially those which were particularly resistant to other ammo mods, such as the indoctrinated Yahg troopers the Reapers had deployed in the millions. She had a feeling she would need something similar here.

The only part of the ruins worth noticing was at the top of the hill. On top of the hill was a circular room, essentially the only complete section still remaining of the upper floors of the structure. It was surrounded with remains of stairways that once had led to floors even higher up. One such stairway and it's archway at the very precipice of the cliff was still standing. It was white grey stone with what looked like rune carvings on them. It was from this, she could tell, that the sick feeling was coming from.

**2**

The first inkling of their enemy she got was when the felt the words press down on her. Despite her translation software being still not ready, she could understand the words perfectly :-

_Three Rings for the Elven Kings under the sky._

_Seven for the Dwarf Lords in their halls of stone._

_Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die._

With each line uttered, the sick feeling intensified pressing down on her mental barriers ( A combination of Prothean nuero-psychological engineering embedded by the beacons she'd interacted with and activated and enhanced by Virgil, the Prothean AI on Ilos to protect the Prothean knowledge in her head, Justicar implants reverse engineered by Mordin for her use and Asari and Drell Meditation training ) until she had to grit her teeth to keep crying out from pain.

Then a hand pressed into the soldier and the pain disappeared, as did most of the sick feeling and she looked to find the Witch Lady beside her. At her questioning glance (she was pretty sure that it was a questioning glance), Shepard gave her a nod, both an answer and a sign of gratitude.

Then she refocused to what was ahead of them, particularly the nine figures that appeared on a semi circle near the complete archway from which the sick feeling was coming.

The figures she found were completely invisible to the sensors of her armor. Not even her Anti Reaper sensors which could detect Reaper Indoctrination signals could detect these nine figures. If they weren't visible, she wouldn't have found them.

**3**

The battle began with the figures rushing at each other. Shepard stayed back to better utilise the range advantage she had and to observe for weakness.

The four men charged in, locking themselves in battle with one or in the case of Whitey and Goldie, two. The Witch Lady had another two retreating.

All of them, Shepard noted were using light. In fact, it seemed it was only in the presence of light that the nine figures interacted with the physical world and thus were vulnerable.

Shepard brought up her omni shield on her left arm she fired off a series of bolts towards the remaining figure that was charging her. The figure, which her pop culture educated mind labelled as Wraith, dodged with lighting speed to her surprise, simply vanishing and reappearing. One of the bolts passed by it and it recoiled a little only then to recover immediately and then vanish and reappear above her, it's sword coming down towards her. Too late to dodge, she brought up her shield just in time and the blade collided with the shield just as the emergency shield program detonated it.

The resounding blast of a compressed mass effect field explosion threw away the figure as it recoiled from the bright thermal bloom of the explosion.

She didn't get to pause as the tingling shiver of her spine made her twist away and from the corner of her eyes she saw a blade pass, missing her by mere inches. She fired off a biotic flare pulse, which enhanced by the micro eezo cores in her armor repulsed the wraith.

The twirl brought her out in front of another one of the figures and she stabbed forward with a omni-blade, using it like punching daggers as she'd learned to do from experience.

Omni-blades are flash forged transparent silicon carbide near diamond hard searing hot blades which are encased and suspended in dense mass effect field. This made even the basic omni blades extremely effective melee weapons. Hers were anything but basic.

Wrex and Mordin, when they'd constructed her omni tools in the rediscovered forges of Tuchanka had combined the cutting edge omni tool tech onto its basic Krogan design. That also included the omni-blade tech.

Her omni-blades now incorporated geth plasma and shield draining tech and reinforced mass effect fields reverse engineered from Virgil's Prothean data base.

The end result was that the blade stabbing at the figure was literally most lethal blade in the world.

It clashed with the figure's blade, scoring it as she detonated it, blasting the figure back, only to feel the alarm blare as the back shield of her armor collapsed under a sword's thrust. A barely put up biotic field slowed it down, its force hammering her more than just physically.

She fired off a biotic flare, using her biotic field to start it off, turning the blade and the figure away.

The next few seconds were a blur as she dodged, parried and repelled off lighting fast attacks, stretching her armor and her reflexes hard and depleting her omni gel reserves she forged blade after blade to turn the attacks away.

She was being slowly but surely being driven back to the edge of the structure when the Witch Lady suddenly appeared in a gigantic blast of light that drove off her attackers. One of the two caught the full brunt of the blast and was instantly shattered. The other was paralyzed and Shepard did not hesitate to take advantage of it's condition. She stabbed him in the chest with an omni blade. The figure shattered when she detonated the blade once it was within it.

**4**

Looking around she found the rest of the figures had already been dealt with and she grimaced as she realised that she was the least effective fighter of the group here.

That grimace turned into a cry of pain as the intact archway was shattered by a fireball. The Witch Lady dropped to the floor and the others fell to their knees but her armor's servos and the self forming spikes on the boots kept her standing at the same as the suit's VI went to work. She winced as she once again felt the suit inject several doses worth of stims and a cocktail of medigel and nutrient solution. Standard protocol since the start of the Reaper war.

Out of the fireball a massive wave of literal darkness emerged, heading straight for them.

Shepard dug in, feet wide and arms stretched with open hands, the palms pointing towards the incoming wave. It was a standard biotic stance.

Then in a technique she'd learned from Samara, her Justicar crew member and one of the strongest biotics in the galaxy, she closed her eyes, breathed in and out and felt. She felt the invisible mass effect fields that came from her self, she felt the eezo cores in her armor and the tiny speck of eezo in her L7x amp and it all blended into the sense of one formless field of force that was all hers to command.

Then she pushed.

The slight stretch of her hands were merely an echo of the force of her mind.

The field expanded into a brilliant barrier, covering her, the Witch Lady on the floor beside her and the rest of the companions who'd somehow made their way to take up positions behind the Witch Lady and if she had been able to look, she would have found that the dome of energy covering them was not the light blue of normal biotics. It was dark, almost like fiery blue and it pulsed brighter too.

The wave of darkness collided with the barrier. Instead of being repelled, it pushed against it. Shepard pushed back, grunting at the force and dropped to one knee.

Unknown to her, three staves and a hand's combined efforts projected a smaller barrier beneath her dome.

The darkness pushed again and she collapsed on her knees, bleeding from her nose. She pushed back one last time, expanding the dome a bit, only for the darkness to push back, breaking through, shattering her dome.

She was thrown back. Her armor's alarms blared as the L7X shattered, her skull escaping massive damage only through the fact that the emergency system built into its armored storage had ejected it out at the first instance of failure.

Her armor's VI administered more medi gel, sealing off multiple wounds as she struggled to get up.

The last thing she saw from her medi gel encased eyes was what looked like the Witch Lady glowing with brilliant blue light before her emergency meds kicked in and she drifted into the blackness.


	4. Author's Note 2

Alright. I've been pretty busy these past days, hence the late upload. Between exams, researching and reading ahead for this fanfic and my own novel and other original stories and a bunch of other things, things have been hectic.

Now, on to the reason for this note.

A few of us like minded have come together to form a Discord server. It's for fanfiction and a lot more. Most importantly, I have a channel there for all my fanfics and I'm inviting anyone interested to the server where you can interact with me directly and with others.

https / discord . gg / J2aHjAS (remove the spaces)

Above is the invite.

Hope to see you all there.


	5. The Calm

**1**

She woke up to the sight of rushing grass slipping past her and a rhythmic noise concurrent with the similar movement. Of course it wasn't the grass that was rushing by. The rhythmic noise and movement betrayed the movement of the cart as it rushed towards its destination with her in it.

A brief pop up window on her visor's HUD drew her attention back to herself. With a single thought the window broadened and she winced as she realised it was her health monitor.

She'd reopened several of the old wounds and one of her ribs had broken as well. She had lacerations on the back of her head and neck from the cracking of her biotic amp and had been bleeding from her nose and her eyes from the shock.

The only good news was that there were no spasms from the exposure to Reaper Indoctrination like signals.

That didn't mean she was willing to risk further damage by trying to get up, so she plopped back into the cart, lying down like she was before. Her cybernetic implants and mods from the Lazarus project were already working but considering the accumulative damage from the repeated injuries, a full recovery was long away.

With a small sigh, she turned and started watching the grass pass by as they went wherever they were going.

**2**

Gandalf looked down upon the Lady in her armour and hesitated. It was clear she was sleeping and loathe he was to wake her, sore and in pain that she must be. Yet a deeper voice urged him on. It was clear that she must be part of the coming events, starting with the coming council. Such was the wisdom of Nienna herself.

Thus it was he gently tapped her armor with his staff.

Shepard woke up at the 'Thunk'. It seemed she had fallen asleep again. Her visor focused on the Wizard's face and groaning she stood up, when he beckoned her forward.

_I have to find something else to do other than follow this bearded fellow straight out of some fantasy novel before i get myself killed._

With that cheery thought she followed him through the camp of what looked like the medieval equivalent of a top notch army. Barring of course the fact that the army was composed entirely of pointy eared beings straight out of some of the fantasy novels she'd read.

Their path led them to a large tent at the centre of the camp. Outside were two guards. The suit automatically scanning them, she found they were armed, aside from the very obvious swords, with several hidden daggers. All the weapons were made from sort of steel alloy which her suit couldn't recognise and their armor was made of a similar unknown steel alloy.

They went past the guards, them having already been apprised about her and her status, whatever that was. She didn't have time to worry about it. Worse scenario, she would kill everyone that tried to harm her. Worst case scenario, she would die and the armor would self destruct, levelling this camp and it's surrounding area. Somehow she was certain that wasn't going to happen. Not when she was with the wizard. He felt a bit like Samara to her. Safe and dangerous.

Inside she found herself looking at an Elf with a crown and she had her first experience of royalty in this world.

**3**

Afterwards she realised three things from being a fly on the wall in the meeting. One. There definitely was going to be war. Two. The king was an arrogant asshole. Three, politics were definitely the same everywhere. She didn't have to understand what was being said to understand that she was witnessing a political negotiation.

Since she couldn't do anything about the other two, she followed her guide to her personal tent to prepare for the first. Apparently she was in august company and deserved VIP treatment. A fact she was going to have to find a way to use to her advantage later on. The days of her doing everything without a care for her own benefit had died a violent death on the floors of the Presidium when the alliance had sold her out again … after Torfan.

The guide led her to a spot on the edge of the Camp and went off. It was a little isolated section with just one tent. Beyond the area, she could see pointy ears in their green hue armor patrolling.

The tent was large, equivalent to a army tent from the 21st century, large and roomy.

She went inside to find a small entrance section, then a small seating area. Moving beyond, past a curtain, she found a small sleeping area. Sitting beside the bed was a small table and a stool. There was a covered platter and a jug on the table. Then past another curtain was a big round bathtub, with steaming water already on it. It would do.

The next few hours were spent on bathing, eating, looking to her injuries, smoking a bit of weed, and cleaning and mending her armor.

Which brought her to the here and now, to her main objective. Improving and modifying her arsenal. Now that she could no longer use biotics, she needed to find another force multiplier to replace that.

A thorough look through her supplies revealed she was low on everything. She only had enough thermal clips for a few hundred rounds. Her omni gel and medigel supply was similarly low. She couldn't do anything about the medigel. She would have to collect more native medicines (what worked) to supplement her supply.

The omni-gel supply she replenished by cannibalising the supply canister.

Her thermal clips she optimised similarly. Considering the tactical situation she might face and her desire to avoid close quarters combat given her injuries, she set aside all the fresh clips for her Sabre rifle. She also set aside her inferno and Hammerhead super armor piercing mod for it. Her Locust smg she kept equipped with the phased ammo mod and all the cooled down thermal clips went to it.

She also had her omni tool combat system. Cluster overloads and Neural shocks for when close quarters combat became unavoidable. Along with her omni blade of course.

As for the replacement for her biotics? She had just the perfect things in mind.

Omni grenades. A joint project between Tali and Solus, with inputs from Shepard and others, Omni grenades were their solution to the ineffectiveness of standard grenades.

Combined combat drones and grenades, each Omni grenade is a smart weapon capable of seeking out groups of targets, often in difficult to reach places and obliterate them. Each grenade consists of a hybrid Prothean/Geth mass effect shield to protect the weapon till it reaches its target. Contained within the shell is an advanced Combat VI with micro sensor package which confers the grenade it's smart capabilities and a warhead. Specifically a dense ball of nano thermite.

On reaching its target, the nano-thermitic charge is detonated and then compressed by the mass effect field until the field collapses and implodes. The resulting explosion is powerful enough to level a circle of 25 metres. These were the safer alternative to the handheld nukes used by the krogans during the Krogan rebellions.

_Perfect! I have enough for a few of those_

And she started working with a vengeance that an Orc horde would find horrifying.

**Meanwhile**

The hill had no name but it offered the most encompassing view of the surrounding regions.

The large orc cared for nothing else. From here he could see the entirety of Mirkwood and the lake, with the old human settlement burning from Smaug's wrath. His scouts had already told him of the newer settlements on the bank and on the ruins of the old human city of Dale. All being constructed with the help of the Mirkwood elves.

He was also aware of the large army of elves and men camped before the gates of the reclaimed Dwarf stronghold and the army of dwarfs marching from the iron hills.

He knew of the strange sorceress who'd killed Azog from distances even the heaviest catapults could not. He felt a sliver of fear settle into his guts like burning steel at that thought.. and had to grip his bow hard and breath as his master had taught him to brush the fear aside.

He and his master had planned for that as well. He, Gabduk of Mordor, now had wondrous devices which could level fortifications and which could be thrown by Trolls and flung from catapults. He also had stores of paste which could be applied to rocks and boulders and afterwards, they could be easily lit with brands of fire and rolled down hilltops or thrown from the bigger fireballs.

He had the largest horde in the memory of Orc Hordes at his command. Every Orc, Goblin, Troll, Warg Pack that could be found by the crebains of his master's arts had been summoned and were being assembled by secret pathways only the master's servants knew. He also had giant spiders under his command,bound to the belt under his over armour, forged for him by his master. He had stocks of fire drakes and fell beasts bred for war.

All this he would unleash at the appointed time like a storm upon the elves, dwarves and men and their wizards.

They would learn to live and serve in fear, at his mercy. For the Age of ORC has arrived.

**Interlude: Somewhere, Sometime and Nowhere.**

When the beings known as Valar had to deal with their defeated kin, Melkor, they had decided to imprison him, for even all their numbers put together were not enough to unmake their brethren, whom they called Morgoth, and Eru Illuvatar would not help them do that act.

But where to imprison him? His previous prisons had not been sufficient in strength and cunning to prevent his escape.

When Manwé, chief among the Valars of Valinor looked to Illuvatar for wisdom, he received it.

So it was that Mandos, the Valar of Doom, guided by Illuvatar, led the chained and shackled Morgoth through paths of his halls even he was unaware of till then and then banished Morgoth into the prison of the Void.

The Void being different from Arda, from it's space and time, being another realm of Illuvatar, Morgoth could not escape, for all his ruinous powers were for naught in the void. No power of Arda could.

It was unfortunate then that what came was not of Arda and being not of Arda or any of his realm, it escaped even Illuvatar's notice, until it was too late.

The energy of the crucible amplified by the energy from each relay of the Milky Way Relay Network passed through the dimensional barriers into the new universe with ease. Held safely within it's nexus was the living body of the True Catalyst. Perhaps it passed through a little too easily but that was not it's concern.

It reached out among the stars and found a haven for her, depositing her in the blink of a second, leaving behind it's imprint for her travels.

Then spent it withered out in a flash of brilliant light, completely unknown.

All but a tiny sliver of it, which attracted inexplicably towards the Void reached out and was spent, Violently, leaving nothing behind of itself.

The void however was not unscathed.

The tiny sliver of energy, miniscule in comparison to the rest of the Crucible energy, was still more energy than held in a star. And all of it had crashed against the prison wall that was the dimensional barrier of the Void.

The damage was negligible really. Just a tiny breach, a chink in it's armor. Morgoth could not squeeze through the sliver whether in his present bound state or unbound.

But the sliver opened the way for Morgoth's other powers, his senses. Even diminished as they were, the powers were sufficient for him to observe Arda. Enough for him to reach out to his servants, those versed enough in the ruinous arts to hear him.

From the moment the gap opened, Morgoth was as good as free. For the Dark Lord's greatest powers were quite similar to politicians. Cunning and deceit were his weapons and Patience his tools.


	6. Measures

**1**

Shepard stared at the half finished omni grenade on the table, clenching her fist, grimace on her face.

Stupid. She had been acting stupidly until this very moment. The fact was she was thinking slow and not at all straight. And she knew why

_I've been fighting too_ —

She brushed those thoughts aside, although a small part of her knew she would have to face them sooner or later.

She returned to the present and the re-evaluation of her actions since arriving here, wherever here was. More specifically, her combat focus.

She had to admit she had been too fixated, too focused on modern warfare. She also had to admit to herself that such an focus was wasteful, given her current circumstances.

Guns and thermal clips were finite resources. Eventually they would be worn down and spent. The half built grenades were also finite resources, though with a few more modifications, they would be formidable assets in the short term. However they were symptoms of the problem. She had been focusing too much on her finite, tactical resources, while ignoring her one strategic resource and the mother of all equalisers in her current circumstances. Her Power Armor.

Her Normandy Class Power Armor was the most powerful and sophisticated piece of technology. At full capacity it had enabled her to withstand a near direct hit from Harbinger's main cannon. Even in its current state, it was a devastating tool in her hands. Especially, again, with a few modifications.

Impatient with herself, she stood up, pushing back the chair and walked out of the partition and out of the tent.

Outside was filled with the bustling noise of a large camp. Soldiers were marching on patrol, blacksmiths cleaning and polishing blades, though only for humans she noticed. There were a couple of sparring circles. She stayed away from them. Instead she followed her nose, heading in the direction from which the smell of cooking came. It led her across the camp, some distance before the royal tent.

The first thing she sensed as she reached the area in question was smell. It was the like the

most exquisite and choiciest of food she could imagine was available for an eat as much as possible meal. Or she was just that hungry.

No matter, when she came to stand before the food stall, she found herself wanting a feast and she was determined no man or elf or whatever the fuck else was here would come between her and that feast.

In the end, no one did stand between her and the feast. No one even raised an eyebrow. Not even when she stood there for more than five minutes pointing out food items.

When she returned to her tent, she was accompanied by two elves carrying a huge and heavy basket filled with freshly cooked food, fruits, a small casket of wine, a casket of water, and several dozen pounds of weed.

They entered her tent, the elves moving ahead as Shepard stood back. The elves set the basket down and left, giving her a small nod.

**2**

Shepard sealed the last conduit back into place. She then tapped a holographic button on her omni tool and smiled in relief and satisfaction as the armor activated smoothly. Her armor sensors told her there were no problems.

She closed the diagnostics off again, putting the armor back on standby. She had been working nonstop for several hours straight. Outside, the silence of the night was shattered by distant wolf howls.

She went to the front of the tent- grabbing her pipe and some weed - opening it up slightly so she could see the moon and sat down. Lighting up the pipe, she took a deep drag and let the smoke out after a few minutes.

She took a few more drags before staring at the moon, going over everything she had done in the past few hours. She had decided she needed to double check herself for now, to make sure she didn't make any mistakes.

She had first painstakingly stripped the micro Eezo cores from her armour, in total over a couple dozen of them. These she had then emplaced into her omni-grenades. She had also modified the grenades to their anti Reaper configuration. Each of the grenades now had the payload of half kiloton. These would serve as her artillery and heavy weapons.

She had then modified the major Eezo cores to connect with the suit's power systems instead of the biotic amplifiers built into the suit. When they had first developed the power armor, Mordin and the others had built the functionality of the suit being able to harness power from the Eezo cores, since they had noticed even with the amplifiers, a biotic couldn't use their biotics for more than a few hours. Only the strongest of the biotics could continue sustained use of biotics far longer and that too came at a price. What it meant for her was that the suit had now enough power to run at full capacity or more for days if necessary. It could overcharge the shields to take a second hit from a Reaper Cannon without compromising suit functions possibly, though she definitely had no intention to test that thought.

She was ready for whatever came next, as ready she could be in present circumstances.

And just in time too. From the frantic preparations, she could guess they were preparing to move soon. Possibly early tomorrow. She would know soon enough.

**3**

And she did. She had woken up early, taken a bath from hot water she procured, finished the leftover of the food she had from yesterday and was just about to give her armor another cleaning when the flap of her tent and the wizard came in.

She immediately noticed the difference in his look. Not his physical appearance but the way he was tense, more guarded. This was a man or whatever he was, who knew war was coming to him and didn't like the fact. She had seen it before, on faces of the people she had conscripted to hold off the meat grinder that was the Batarian Hegemony Slaver forces. The rest of the world called it the Skylian Blitz. She had another name for it. Massacre. She would never forget the face of the couple she had been with the previous nights, sandwiched between their bodies on the finest hotel on Elysium. They had been caught during one of the raids to destroy the slavers supply, and strung up alive on top of the Elysium towers, their agony broadcasted for the defenders to see. She had put a bullet each into their skulls and moved on to the slavers. Years later, she had met with their daughter, before the Reapers took that from her too.

She took up everything she had and followed him. Outside, the armies of Elves and local Humans had gathered in formation.

It was quite evident that the elves were far superior fighting force than the humans. They were numerically and equipment wise superior, as well as being far better trained. The only unit of humans who remained in equally maintained formation were the human archers, led by a tall, grim looking man.

The humans had swords, a few pikes, and the rest were archers.

The Elves had a thousand archers,four thousand infantry divided between pikes and swords and a thousand men operating

what looked like siege crossbows.

She joined at the front beside the wizard, the elven king and the grim man as they started marching towards wherever it was they were going.

**4**

Where they were going turned out to be between two spurs of the mountain. Spread out between the two spurs was a river valley and the head of it was the main entrance to the dwarf fort.

They were almost at the entrance when from further away, from the paths leading down from the opposite end of the spur, came the sounds of marching as an entire dwarven army came into view.

Her armour's sensors worked it's magic and within seconds she had the exact strength and composition of the army on her HUD.

She didn't like what she saw. The dwarves or whatever they were had 500 heavily armoured infantry,1000 cavalry on what looked to be giant horned rams, 150 wagons with large repeating crossbows drawn by teams of 8 rams, and what really worried her, 300 siege artillery which seemed to be better made than the elven ones.

It wasn't their numbers or weapons she was worried about. Personally, she could wipe them all out with a single well placed omni grenade.

It was simply the fact that she had that same tingling in her spine as she had before the battle on the ruined fortress. She had a feeling they were about to face bigger worries.

Not that anyone would care even if she could make them understand. They were here to measure their pricks and they weren't about to be distracted. Already the elves and the local humans were forming up to meet the new arrivals.

The only one who looked to be as disgruntled by all this posturing was the Wizard. She was watching the new arrivals draw closer, her eyes met briefly with the Wizard's. In them she saw the confirmation to her own worries.

**_Yep. We're definitely screwed._**


	7. So It Begins

**1**

The first inkling of the real **Trouble** Shepard had was when she was on the left flank of the combined Elven and Local Human alliance army battle formation, nearest to the Dwarven fortress entrance, whose tall walls were visible from where she was standing, which was nearest to the wall.

Yes, she was calling them Elves and Dwarves. Sometime during the last hour and a half,while the Alliance army had moved into its present battle formation,she had decided to fuck with the maybes and call them as she saw them.

She had bigger things to worry about. Such as the twelve dwarves and a single hobbit on the top of the wall, the former heavily armed, who would definitely try to stop her, violently, if she had to do as she had planned and climbed to the top of the wall to shoot at the dwarven army from there with her M99 Sabre.

She also had to worry about the small group of allies, including the King, the grim man and the Wizard, in the middle of the ground between the alliance and the dwarven army, negotiating with their leaders. They were within the range of the siege weapons at the back of the dwarven army.

Though if they tried that,they would find out just what it was like to be caught in a half kiloton explosion, she thought with a grim smile as she fingered one of the omni grenades on her armor's weapons locker.

She felt a spike of energy and the force of it brought her down to her knees. It was alive, a roiling seething mass of darkness, exactly as she had felt in the ruins and it almost made her body give up, only prevented by the anti-Reaper adapting, using the data gathered from her previous encounters with the energy at the ruins to modulate the shields, their biotic component kicking in, cutting off the sensation.

It was enough for her to hear what felt the entire mountain collapsing. Looking up towards the direction of the noise, she felt her stomach drop. The mountain or at least parts of it was indeed collapsing. Two of the spurs, the one behind the large dwarven army and the one from where she and her allies had come from, were crashing down with all the terrible force of the rockfalls that they were, crashing and falling right into the two paths leading out of the valley, completely blocking them with large rocks and other debris.

Out of the holes left by the crashed sections came out giant worms and it took her a moment to believe what she was seeing. Her armour helped by magnifying the optical sensors, though that didn't help at all with the growing sense of dread that curdled in her stomach.

The worms were big,with mouths filled with thick,serrated teeth that they probably used to eat through the rocks. And the worms were thick too, thicker than thresher maws,and that took some doing.

Then her suit's threatboard lit up as her visor zoomed in on particular sections where the sensors had picked up on things. It took her a moment to realise what she was seeing.

Platforms. Giant platforms bolted into the worm, stretching inside into it,sealed with layers of flesh and wood. From inside those sections came lifesigns. Uglies. The platforms were filled with the uglies that she had fought when she had first woken up on the planet. There were other lifesigns there too, which her sensors didn't recognise. And there were dozens of platforms just from what her sensors could see.

This was no random giant worm attack. This was a carefully planned ambush, a trapping maneuver. Both Reaper and Citadel forces had used such tactics in the Reaper war and she knew what came next. She needed to act immediately.

She turned to gaze to her right, at the Elven army and winced. Most were collapsed, writhing and groaning,in various degrees of pain.

She turned her gaze towards the meeting place and saw a bright white shield slowly wink out and the wizard collapse. At the same time her sensors told her that the first platforms were open and disgorging their troops.

She sprinted out, going from 0 to 40kph in 3 seconds. As she did so, she retrieved a Omni grenade with each of her hands from their lockers.

In about half a minute, she reached the meeting place. Still in full sprint, she twisted around in a full circle,her armour's systems taking the brunt of the shock of the sudden stop, and threw the two grenades up and away as she was still coming out of her spin, using her body's momentum and her armour's strength to throw them as high and as fast as she could and watched as they rocketed away.

Then she took a moment to look at the dwarves in the army a little distance away. They were in the same condition as the elves and the humans, most of them on the ground.

Then she dropped her gaze towards the Wizard. He was slowly getting up on his staff. She reached his side and knelt down beside him, putting an arm on his back to prevent him from rising. At her touch he looked at her, her visor open, and she gestured for him to lie flat on the ground and cover his ears, miming what she wanted him to do.

He looked at her quizzically for a second, then gave a brief nod. He said something aloud, passing on what she had said, she presumed. A moment later she was proven right as the rest of them laid down and put their arms over their ears.

Her visor sealed up again and she dropped lightly over the wizard, shielding him with her body, the shields on her overcharged with power from the armor's main eezo cores.

Then she waited.

**2**

The two omni grenades, upon their release upward, rocketed away, travelling at 180km per hour skyward. In just about a minute, they reached the peak of their arc at 700 meters and went active.

Before gravity could start bringing them down, each activated its mass effect fields and fired their boosters for exactly a second and a half, rocketing themselves further up to the higher altitude of a kilometre and a half.

Then their sensors started scanning the ground below for the appropriate striking position, based on the targeting data their host armor had compiled for them before launch in a neat little data packet.

It took them barely a second to match targeting parameters with their data. It seemed the giant worms, designated Not Thresher Maw 1 and 2 respectively, had left the spurs quite hollow and the scans showed that several dozen meters inside through the crashed sections would be the perfect spot.

The airburst would be amplified by the enclosed surroundings, and the overpressure would kill the hostiles on the giant platforms and collapse the rest of the spur on the opened section at the same time.

With another burst of their boosters, the grenades separated mid-flight towards their individual targets. The boosts this time were more sustained and the grenades now accelerated at over 200km per hour, streaking down towards their target.

It took them 15 seconds to reach their targets, travelling so fast that the orcs and other creatures had no time to react as they went inside the crashed sections, high above them.

And then they exploded. For a moment, even from within the openings, there were two new suns in the sky and they were a dark unearthly blue.

And then the suns exploded outward in a shockwave that killed flesh and metal alike. The giant worms shrieked as their flesh and bones were crushed and the platforms bolted to their sides were turned into thousands of razor sharp hot splinters - their occupants turned into so much mush- that carved deep into the worms, tearing and burning large swathes of their bodies.

That was just the beginning of course. Each of the blast tore through the weakened spurs, and the mountain spurs collapsed in great heaves of rocks, dirt and razor sharp hot splinters, shearing and crushing more platforms hidden inside the mountains and blocking the mountain, sealing those who survived in with the dirt and the fires that had started from the burning splinters and the thermal bloom which had partly been trapped by the enclosed space.

But perhaps the most damaging of the effects was done by the Element Zero that accompanied the shockwave. It burned through the Dark Runes of Mordor, temporarily shutting them down, those which outright didn't burn out.

Every siege engine and cunning device of the army within the extended radius stopped working, breaking down and causing more disarray and injury and death in the army.

In one single strike, Shepard had just turned the Blitzkrieg ambush of the enemy into a slow crawl. When the blast subsided, she got up from her position over the wizard and helped him up.

The rest of the group got up slowly and stared at her with expressions of amazement and awe and in some cases, fear.


End file.
